HOW DO BEST FRIENDS FALL?

 

Disclaimer: Not mine

 

Strange little fic set in the episode Hells Bells.

 

 

It’s strange really I never understood how two best friends could fall in love. When you’re someone’s best friend they know you so well, often better than you really know yourself. Every single detail of you, your faults and weakness, your shameful secrets, your life apart and the one together are shared. I always figured it made you too close to ever be a couple. But now here’s where I contradict myself by saying – I always have understood how you could fall in love with your best friend. Or so I thought – now I know for sure how you can fall in love with your best friend, because I’ve fallen in love with mine. I always guessed that it must have something to do with being so close, in my more cynical moments I did guess that it became more a need for companionship than that of love – now I know differently. Now all my speculations of how you could fall for your best friend have been blown away and replaced with the truth and reality of it. See now I know for sure how you fall for someone who is your best friend someone who is that close to you. In its simplest form it’s BECAUSE they are so close to you, BECAUSE they know you that well and because you know them that way. See a best friend is essentially the one person in the world who knows you best, who stays your friend DESPITE the fact they know all your greatest weaknesses, despite the fact that they know all the most shameful things you’ve ever done. There are many explanations as to why I haven’t fallen in love with my best friend before now – the only one which I think makes any sense is because quite simply my best friend knew all my greatest weakness – all but one. Until recently. Recently my best friend found out my greatest weakness – and my best friend still stayed my best friend. My best friend didn’t change anything between us because my best friend knew. My best friend found out the truth and stayed. See there’s probably the other reason, both linked so closely together it becomes difficult to separate them. See my greatest weakness has always been hidden because I naively thought that the one thing my best friend admired most in me was actually a lie and it was the greatest lie, because that lie actually concealed my greatest weakness. I have a thing about that – about people leaving. Eventually they found out everything and become so disappointed in me that they leave me. My best friend already knew everything the other people found out gradually and was still there. But different people have different breaking points – I thought the things that would send the others away weren’t the things that would send my best friend away that finding out my greatest weakness would send my best friend away. I was wrong. So you see now I know how it is possible to fall in love with your best friend. I trust my best friend now more than I ever have and I trusted my best friend a lot before. I’ve come to see how amazing my best friend is – how truly wonderful. Kind, sensitive, strong, caring, a good cook, good handy-to-have-around-the-house skills, these are the things I already knew my best friend was. But now I know my best friend is more. My best friend is the one person in the world who I know without the slightest shadow of a doubt will support me.

So I guess you’re thinking how lucky I am, one of those people who fall for their best friend – how truly perfect. That’s my problem though. Falling in love with someone is often never that simple of that perfect, because you see my best friend, my wonderful best friend is about to get married. And my best friend is not marrying me. But because my best friend is always there for me, supporting me and helping me and caring for me I have to be here and do all those things for my best friend. I have to support my best friend now – in less than an hour my best friend will belong to someone else. And the sad thing – if I’d realised sooner my best friend could have belonged to me.

 

My best friend is crying and though usually I’d go to my best friend now I don’t. I cannot support my best friend right now, because I am too busy trying to support myself – plus I don’t know why my best friend is crying. Right now I’m trying to figure out the best time to share with the person I am about to marry all my misgivings that are giving me serious cause for concern – the misgivings that are right now prancing round in my head screaming for me to call off the wedding. But that would be too cruel. It’s too late and now it has to happen. I’ve left it too long. It’s my own fault really, after all I am the one who proposed. If I had fears I shouldn’t have done so, or should have said something sooner. I wish I could blame it all on my parents, claim that the only thing wrong is the fear we’ll become them. But in truth it’s not. Truth is a lot of it has to do with life after the wedding. The life that I will have to live. The life away from Sunnydale and demons and a life with screaming children. A life without my best friend. And there it is the crux of the matter. I cannot face a life without my best friend. Even to me it seems wrong that I am willing to give up the person I am meant to be marrying for my best friend and yet not the other way around. But the problem is my best friend doesn’t know how I feel. But I know how my best friend feels. I know my best friend doesn’t feel the same about me. I know my best friend has never and will never feel for me what I feel for my best friend. Is it cruel to marry someone else because I cannot be with the person I really love? I’m not saying I don’t care for the person I’m about to marry because I do. Very much so – but that person is not my best friend and it isn’t the same. So am I going to be that cruel?

 

 

I have to find my best friend. My best friend has run from that small room where my best friend waited for the wedding. I want to know why and part of me flies high to the hope that my best friend isn’t truly in love with the person waiting for a wedding that may now never happen. Hope that my best friend loves me. It doesn’t take me long to figure out where my best friend is. I’m not called a best friend for nothing I’m bright enough to know where to look. The Bronze. People must think we’re strange in the wedding clothes we are wearing but I slip into the seat beside my best friend. I don’t say anything – mainly because I’m afraid I’ll blurt out some feelings that are best kept to myself, so I wait for my best friend to speak.

 

I should have known that I’d be found, I should have known who it would be that would find me, after all no one knows me better. The answer to the question – no I’m not going to be that cruel. Today I have walked away from the life that was so close to being mine. I resolve myself now that I will tell my best friend why I left. I know that’s what they will all want to know. I also know I could lie – to be honest I was considering it. But I don’t lie to my best friend.

“I’m too in love with someone else to marry Anya.” I see something flicker across my best friend’s face – something in me tells me it was hope but I quickly tell myself to shut up and stop leading myself on. “It’s you, you know.” And then I see it, the smile.

“I know.” And she kisses me.

 

I just lied to my best friend – but it was only a small lie. More a half-lie. It was hope more than knowledge that he was talking about me. But what’s it matter now – after all we’re now in the wonderful after glow of passionate sex in each other’s arms in my bed.

“I’m truly glad I learnt that it is possible to fall in love with your best friend – I’m truly glad you were my best friend to fall in love with.” To anyone other than my best friend that sentence would seem slightly nonsensical but not to my best friend. Not to my Xander.

“I’m glad you’re my best friend to fall in love with too Buffy Anne Summers.” And I smile as he kisses me – I know he’s telling me the truth. I know this because he knows my greatest weakness. I know this because he knows that although they have all always thought I was so strong, I was without weakness. Now he knows the truth and he’s here. Now he knows how weak I am, he knows now how much I truly need him and he’s here. That’s how I know he loves me.